Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
They are smaller. But then, so is Israel.Hamas doesn't have a navy or an air force and saying they have an army is a huge stretch - nothing like as well organised or well armed comparatively (weapons have been modernised) as either Germany and Japan. They haven't taken over any other countries. Ok they've killed a few thousand but Germany and Japan killed millions - much higher proportions of the populations they attacked. Ehud Barak has said Hamas does not pose an existential threat to Israel as a whole - though they will continue to want to mount atrocities in Israel. Presumably they want to make it so Israelis want to leave though their rhetoric is that Israel won't force them out of Gaza,
That doesn't mean they are better or worse than WW2 Germany/Japan - they are different in kind.
Native Americans have been recognized as sovereign nations by the US federal government and were granted full US citizenship over a century ago. Has Likud done anything similar for Palestinians? No. Palestinians are not considered Israeli citizens, because the current Israeli government believes in Jewish supremacy and rejects a multi-ethnic state and liberal democratic values.
Israel goodIsrael is a multi ethnic state that holds liberal democratic values.
Palestine is a racist sexist state with a terrorist government. They've had more than enough opportunities to make peace, choose non-violence, and seek to live alongside their neighbors.
They've chosen violence every single time. Enough is enough.
Israel good
Palestine bad
It doesn't matter what Hamas wants. In other kinds of situations it might matter what the enemy wants, but this is different. When I quoted that Latin phrase about "_____ must be destroyed", you agreed with me. But the reason I quoted it, is that I've always taken the key word to be "must"; it has to be done, regardless of what it takes to get it done. So far, Israel is doing a very good job of ignoring world opinion, as they should.The IDF's current approach is self-defeating. High numbers of civilian casualties and severe damage is precisely what Hamas wants.
What would radicalize more Palestinians, is if Israel shows weakness and loses, or accepts less than complete victory. In one of these threads, I posted a video from the Hamas leader's son where, near the beginning of the war, he said "But in the Middle East we deal with business the Middle East style". In the Middle East, they respect power, they attack weakness.I wasn't talking specifically about Gazans in that paragraph, but considering that so many Palestinians have witnessed the deaths of their loved ones as a result of the IDF's excessive bombing campaign, there's little doubt this is going to radicalize a great number of Palestinians and many who sympathize with them.
None of those strategies are anything Israel can accomplish except the military one. So your strategies for Israel are non-existent besides military. So it appears they are following your strategy.I outlined a winning strategy in this post.
And it is supported by research.
Terrorist groups end for two major reasons: Members decide to adopt nonviolent tactics and join the political process (43 percent), or local law-enforcement agencies arrest or kill key members of the group (40 percent). Military force has rarely been the primary reason for the end of terrorist groups (7 percent), and few groups since 1968 have achieved victory (10 percent).
Most terrorist groups that have ended did so by pursuing their goals through politics. The possibility of a political solution is linked to a key variable: the breadth of terrorist goals. Most terrorist groups that end because of politics seek narrow policy goals, such as policy change, territorial change, or regime change.
Poor economic conditions may heighten grievances, which provide a more supportive environment for terrorist groups and increase their longevity. Grievances are difficult to measure independently of terrorism, but measures of average levels of discrimination are feasible. Some argue that greater economic inequality creates broad grievances that favor terrorism. “Governments that fail to meet the basic welfare and economic needs of their peoples and suppress their liberties... This means that terrorist groups tend to last longer in poor countries. If so, one way to end terrorism is to improve the economic condition of countries where terrorism is most prevalent.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/mg741rc
That doesn't answer my question at all.If depopulating the region of non-Jews and putting them in open air prison camps were really a righteous cause, it wouldn't require this level of apologetics. Nobody has to make arguments for helping old ladies across the street or rescuing cats from trees.
Just how Hamas wanted it. Hamas got elected to run the place and they did nothing but run it into the ground. They received billions in aid and instead of using it to help build something for the people they stole it, built underground tunnels and purchased weapons and equipment for weapons, bought fuel And food for the terrorists....there is no question Gaza was the perfect environment to ferment radicaliztion and terrorists for 20+ years. A very young population, with no oppotrunities (very high unemployment), freedom of movement, etc. The same argument was used by the US to justify invading and occupy Afghanistan for nearly two decades. We saw how that turned out...Israel would be wise to repeat it...but I digress.
I think it's also true the Arab governments and various Palestinan actors have utterly failed the Palestinian people by not reaching a political solution with Israel over the past couple of decades.
As David Brooks recently opined:
"Throughout this horrible week, my mind has repeatedly flashed back to Dec. 23, 2000. That was the day the Palestinians were offered a path to having their own nation on roughly 95 percent of the land in the West Bank and 100 percent of the land in the Gaza Strip. Under that outline, Israel would also swap some of its own land to compensate the Palestinians in exchange for maintaining 80 percent of its settler presence in the West Bank.
The Palestinians would control, in President Bill Clinton’s formulation, “Arab areas” of East Jerusalem. And on the most sensitive religious sites, there would have been divided sovereignty or jurisdiction, with Palestinians controlling the Haram al-Sharif (including the Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques) and Israel controlling the Western Wall and the holy space of which it is a part. There would also be a return of many refugees into the new Palestinian state (without the right of return to Israel itself).
There were a million complexities — and many errors made by the Israeli, Palestinian and American sides along the way. But this offer pointed the way to the sort of fair solution negotiators had been struggling their way toward for years. It is hard to see this kind of option ever being on the table again. And the Palestinians let it slip away."
...and
"Another reason I think back on this history is the way a simplistic oppressor/oppressed, colonizer/colonized, “apartheid Israel” narrative has been imposed on this conflict.
The real history is much more complicated. It is the story of the Palestinians who were offered a state in 1947 that the Arab states opposed. More recently, it is the story of flawed human beings on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, who were confronted with a devilishly complicated situation. They worked doggedly to secure peace and made real, if stumbling, progress toward that end. It is the story of how radicals on both sides undermined their efforts, leading to the bloodshed we see today. This is what happens when the center does not hold."
Opinion | The Missed Chance for Peace (Published 2023)
It’s hard not to wonder whether today’s suffering could have been avoided if in 2000 Palestinians had taken the offer of a path toward statehood.www.nytimes.com
I posted the same information. Gee I guess Israel is out to put all Gazans into the south to make it easier to kill them all. Cause obviously that's been their goal all along to kill as many citizens as possible committing genocide. Right?...seems Israel is formalizing daily "windows" for evacuation from the north though they are not committing to the length.
Israel has agreed to daily, four-hour pauses in operations inside Gaza to allow more civilians to leave the northern part of the enclave and facilitate an increase in humanitarian aid entering from Egypt, the White House said Thursday. The pauses are to begin “today,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters, though Israel had offered similar windows for civilians to evacuate earlier in the week. The Israel Defense Forces’ statements Thursday did not mention an agreement for daily pauses, and did not offer specifics about their length. Asked to respond to the subsequent White House description, Elyon Levy, spokesman for office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, confirmed that Israel would continue to allow a “window” for the evacuation of civilians along a specific corridor.
The Israel Defense Forces said there were “tactical, local pauses for humanitarian aid” that were “limited in time and area,” and that it was “providing humanitarian corridors for civilians in Gaza to temporarily move south to safer areas where they can receive humanitarian aid.”
I posted the same information. Gee I guess Israel is out to put all Gazans into the south to make it easier to kill them all. Cause obviously that's been their goal all along to kill as many citizens as possible committing genocide. Right?
If depopulating the region of non-Jews
and putting them in open air prison camps were really a righteous cause,
Well let's take a look...it wouldn't require this level of apologetics.
No I've heard them from people here. One read so many posts I don't know if it was in this thread or another....it's all about you? And implying positions that were never stated here?
Oh I've read it all right. Not on this thread but on the one that was shut down. People said it. And haven't you read anything anywhere or heard anything anywhere about Israel committing genocide on the Palestinians?...it's all about you? And implying positions that were never stated here?
Continuation of the thread closed on 4 Nov 23: Hamas-Israel News Thread
Updates regarding the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Literally, some groups defend the initial Hamas, invasion:It's the apologetics for them that's rather disgusting.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?